One of the things that everyone says they know about artists is they are crazy. Every painter is a schitzo that ate too much cadmium. Every writer is a hermit locked away in an old shack in Montana. Well, every artist is not crazy. Most people become what is expected of them. They aren't inherently crazy, but they do see the world in a different way.
Painting is different than writing. Painting, you show the world how you see it in a two dimensional image of your perspective. You pick the medium, the canvas size, and decide how to place which objects where on your surface. You don't create a world, you depict it. Writing is a qualitatively different avenue for expression. It is simultaneously more limited and liberating than paint or charcoal. They are only letters on a page or a screen, but they become words, describing people and places, mind-scapes articulating a whole different world stemming from the writer's imagination where every detail must be imagined and communicated.
When you are creating a whole world in your computer, there are moments when you forget about the real world. You forget about the desk or the couch where you sit typing feverishly getting out each thought as quickly as your fingers move across the keys. If you spend a whole day writing, the moment you step outside feels like the dream. The line between dream and real life is blurred. This blurring is so strong that you begin to feel like the world on your word processor is more real than the trees overhanging your sidewalk outside your window.
So, who needs drugs or oil paint when you can induce an altered state of consciousness by writing? Cheers!
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